The Blood Lie

by Shirley Reva Vernick

  “Making ready for tomorrow’s shlug kapporus,” she said but kept on writing.

  The shlug kapporus service took place every Yom Kippur eve in Rabbi Abrams’ backyard. The rabbi took a live hen— usually one of the Pools’—and held it over the congregants’ heads while praying for the forgiveness of their sins. Then a few of the women cooked the bird in the rabbi’s kitchen, preparing the meat to share with a needy family in town and using the bones to make soup for breaking the Yom Kippur fast.

  This year the chicken meal would go to Frenchie LaRoux. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t Jewish; what mattered was that he needed it. People said he was so poor he didn’t have electricity or a stick of furniture. When he won a used car at the Sacred Heart raffle over the summer, they claimed he just cut a hole through the wall of his shack and drove the car right inside so he could read by the headlights, sleep in the back seat, and warm his food on the engine. Regardless of where the truth ended and the tall tale began, Mrs. Pool clearly wanted the meal to be delicious.

  “Jack,” she said, pocketing her notepad, “I’m up to my ears in matzo balls. Take the girls out for a while, will you?”

  Jack groaned. He wanted to be alone with his cello, to practice for his audition, to drown his thirst for Emaline in a sea of music. But it was useless to argue. Besides, watching Martha and Daisy for a while sure beat working in the kitchen. “How about a walk?” he asked the little girls.

  “Downtown!” they shrieked at the same time.

  “Just have Daisy home by noon,” said Mrs. Pool. And so it was settled.

  The girls held Jack’s hands for a little while, but as soon as they rounded the corner onto Main Street, Martha and Daisy raced ahead to the confectionery shop. Crammed with penny suckers, licorice whips, saltwater taffy and all sorts of chocolates, the tiny store was a magnet for children. The girls pressed their noses against the window until it fogged up.

  Jack stepped next door to the barbershop, where Walter Robinson displayed photos of the high school sports teams. Not that Jack was in any of the pictures—he wasn’t, even though he’d been on the baseball team for two years now. He missed the photo shoots because they were taken at games. Games were played on Saturdays, and Mrs. Pool wouldn’t hear of sports on the Sabbath (working on Shabbos was bad enough, she said, but at least that was out of necessity). Coach Romeo grumbled about it but let Jack work out with the team five afternoons a week—“because you can bat, dammit, and my outfield needs the practice”—even though he missed every game. He couldn’t tell whether his teammates admired him or resented him.

  Actually, he found out last spring how at least one of the guys felt about him. The team was in the common shower after practice when Moose Doyle called out in his larger-than-life voice, “Hey, Pool, were you born that way, or were you in a freak accident?” He wasn’t pointing at Jack’s crotch, but he might as well have been. Jack was the only circumcised boy on the team. Maybe he was the only circumcised boy Moose had ever seen.

  Some of the other boys snickered. Some of them laughed out loud. Only when George Lingstrom told Moose to shut up did they all stop making noise. But they didn’t stop staring. From that day on, Jack showered at home.

  “C’mon,” Jack said to the girls. “Let’s keep moving.”

  They passed the apothecary, the jeweler’s, J.J. Newbury’s, the A&P and finally Pool’s Dry Goods. “Can we go in, please, pretty please?” asked Martha. “I want to see Pa.”

  “He’s busy,” Jack said. “Let’s cross the street instead.”

  He took the girls’ hands and walked them across the road until they were standing in front of Gus’ Sit Down Diner. The Sit Down was a shiny linoleum-and-Formica place that became the center of the universe early every morning and again at lunchtime. Sarah Gelman worked there part-time. Maybe she’s the one I should be pinning white roses on, he thought. Sarah was likable and nice-looking, and, of course, she was Jewish, a fact that placed her within reach. But who was he fooling? Sarah wasn’t Emaline and never could be.

  “Who’s that?” asked Daisy, pointing to a man emptying rubbish into a can in the diner parking lot.

  “That’s the owner,” Jack said. “Gus.” A squat, nearly bald man, Gus Poulos was chewing a cigar and trickling ashes every time he moved. “I eat supper here sometimes when I’m working late, and he brings me my food.”

  “His head’s shiny,” Daisy said, and Martha giggled. “Is he nice?”

  “He’s okay, I guess,” Jack said. “He knows Mama goes to the Sunflower Café instead of to his place. And that’s because the Sunflower makes pies and doughnuts for us—without lard. Gus would never do that. But he hates losing the business.”

  The noon bells from the Sacred Heart Church began to ring. “Okay. Time to get you home, Daisy.”

  “Aw,” Martha pouted.

  “C’mon,” Jack said. “I’ve got to get back to the store soon, anyway.”

  As they headed back across Main Street and rounded the corner of Maple, it dawned on Jack that Emaline might be home when he dropped off Daisy. He couldn’t face her—not right now. He knew jealousy was written all over his face, and he didn’t want her to see it. So he dropped Daisy off at the foot of her driveway. He watched her until she disappeared inside, then challenged Martha to a race back home.

  Emaline and Lydie cut through Paradise Woods on their way home. The dirt path was covered with end-of-year pine needles, and the leaves on the trees were already tinged yellow and red, but it felt more like summer than autumn. The woods ran on for miles, dense with scaly-trunked trees, spiky evergreens, jagged vines, and prickly shrubs, but if you stuck to the paths, there were some handy shortcuts, especially on a bright day like today.

  “George Lingstrom sure thinks you’re the bee’s knees,” Lydie said as they passed the boulder they called the Sausage Stone.

  “Really?”

  “Anyone can see he’s goofy over you. And what about you, Em?”

  “What about me?”

  Lydie pushed her glasses up her nose and looped her arm through her cousin’s. “Do you fancy him back?”

  “Well…”

  “Well what? The fall festival dance is coming up, isn’t it, and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts he’s going to ask you. You’ll say yes, won’t you?”

  “I suppose I will…I mean, yes. Probably. Yes, I’d love to go to the dance. With George. If he asks.” It wasn’t like Jack was going to ask her, after all. It wasn’t like Jack could ask her.

  “He’ll ask.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I said, he’ll ask you.”

  “You know, his father’s a drunk—at least, that’s what Ma says, ever since he lost his job at the aluminum works. Cussing and hollering all day, and I hear—”

  “But you’re not going to the dance with the old man, are you?”

  “Yeah…hey, do you have any ciggies on you?”

  “Almost a full pack,” Lydie said, stopping to spit out her gum. She pulled the box out of her coat pocket and lit one, handed it to Emaline, then lit another one for herself. “Let’s duck behind that tree.” She led Emaline to the same fat oak where Jack had held her hand.

  “Mmm, that’s good,” Emaline said, taking a puff.

  “Mother says they turn your teeth brown and your fingers yellow.” Then she laughed. “She’s such a worrywart.”

  Emaline leaned her head against the tree, exhaling a slow plume of smoke. “They remind me of Daddy, how he smelled like tobacco—tobacco and shaving cream. He smoked every night after supper and whenever we went driving. I wonder if he and your daddy were smoking when the accident happened. I wonder if the last thing they did in this life was take a puff of their Lucky Strikes.”

  “Couldn’t say,” Lydie said without much interest.

  “You don’t talk about him—about your daddy—much,” Emaline said. “I probably talk about mine too much. Everything, everyone reminds me of him. Ma especially. She reminds me of him every time I see that look
in her eye, that awful, sorrowful look. I don’t know how you did it, you and your ma—you pulled yourselves together lickety-split.”

  Lydie let her ashes fall to the ground. “Maybe that’s because—this is probably a terrible thing to say—but I don’t really miss Father. I don’t think Mother does, either. Oh, don’t look so shocked. You know how he could be—his spells, as Mother called them. We never knew who was coming to dinner at night: the gloomy father, the mean and angry one, or the sweet one.”

  “I…oh.”

  “Don’t tell me you never noticed.”

  “I guess so. It’s just…”

  “Just what?” Lydie asked, flicking her ashes on the ground.

  “You know, denigrating the dead.”

  “That’s the best time to denigrate someone—when they’re dead. They don’t get their feelings hurt that way. Honestly, I bit my tongue so often when he was alive, I’m lucky I can still talk. Ma and I are better off without him, and that’s the truth.”

  Emaline tried to take a puff, but the smoke made her cough this time.

  “Sorry,” Lydie said, rubbing her cousin’s back. “Sorry to spout off like that. Didn’t mean to make you have a fit.”

  “I’m okay. I’m glad you told me. I should have figured it out for myself. It’s just, you know, thinking about the accident and all…well…Ma wanted us home by 12:30 and it’s past that now. We should go.”

  “Right.”

  Lydie and Emaline dropped their cigarettes and stamped them out with their feet. “Here, I have some Lifesavers,” Lydie said. “Take one. Aunt Jenna will have a cow if she finds out what’s been keeping us.”

  Mrs. Durham was heating a venison stew when the cousins walked in. “Finally,” she said, pulling her hair back and leaning down to breathe in the gamey aroma. “Ah, that’s perfect.”

  “I’m starving, Ma,” Emaline said.

  “Wash up and I’ll get you some. Say, what’s in the box?” She lifted the lid and examined the hat from different angles. A tall, statuesque redhead—people said she looked like President Coolidge’s wife—she had a good eye for fashion and was always smartly dressed. “Very nice. Perfect for the autumn. By the way, Daisy was right behind you, wasn’t she?”

  “No,” Emaline said.

  “I just sent her out to call you. Told her you could all have lunch together. I thought that’s why you came.”

  “We just got here, is all. Plus I’m famished.”

  “You must have crossed paths then. Well, she’ll be along when she’s done straggling.”

  Mrs. Durham sprinkled the stew with a medley of herbs and salt that she kept in an old milk bottle. She loved milk bottles and used them to hold everything from flowers to spices to the occasional pollywog. They were her closest connection to her Frank, who’d run the Sweet Creamery Dairy with his brother, and she kept them in every room.

  She ladled out two bowls of stew and set them on the table. “All right, clean up after yourselves, girls. I have some bulbs to plant out front. I think I’ll just give Daisy a shout first.” She opened the back door and made a long, low whistle.

  Gus Poulos was standing behind the register at the Sit Down Diner counting the dollar bills, while Sarah Gelman took inventory in the pantry and Tiny, the cook, stood over the deep-fryer.

  “Twenty-three,” Gus said to no one as he bit down on his cigar. “Twenty-three miserable little clams. And that’s before you take out wages. For this I left Salonika?”

  “You say something?” called Tiny.

  “Yeah. I want you to tell me where to find the glittering gold roads and the marble sidewalks people told me about when I was a kid.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Tiny said in his Irish brogue. “We all think we’re going to live the life here, and we end up just barely getting by.”

  “Amen to that.” Gus started to light a fresh cigar when the diner door jangled open and Roy Royman limped in. Royman hobbled to a stool at the counter and leaned his walking stick against the railing. “Morning,” he said.

  “You’re late,” Gus said.

  “Hey, Tiny, whatcha cooking back there?”

  “Shepherd’s pie, meatloaf, doughnuts about to come out of the fryer. You want?”

  “Any hash browns left?”

  Tiny shook his head.

  “Eh, give me a slab of meatloaf, and save me a couple doughnuts, plain.”

  Gus led Royman to the table nearest the noisy window fan.

  “We on for tonight?” Royman asked.

  “Rum boat’ll be here between midnight and two, depending.”

  “Depending on what?”

  Gus shrugged. “Depending on everything. Anyhow, get the truck here by eleven-thirty.”

  “Why’s it got to be so late, that’s what I don’t understand,” Royman said. “What am I supposed to tell the missus?”

  “My Bettina just thinks I’m out gin milling. Anyway, let’s make it eleven straight up, just to be sure.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever you say.”

  Gus and Royman’s smuggling operation was easy money during these Prohibition days. Whiskey and wine were legal a scant mile across the St. Lawrence River in Canada. All it took was knowing one Canadian with a boat who was willing to load up with alcohol and meet you somewhere. Then you let a few discreet friends know you had a supply. You might let the Mr. Lingstrom-types know, too. You might even let a Jew know because the Jews used wine to welcome the Sabbath, and if you couldn’t get business from the sheenies on your pies and meats, you might as well get them with the hooch.

  Better yet, you kept your direct dealings to a few trusted customers, and let them sell their stuff to the Jews and the drunks.

  Tiny appeared with a plate heaped with meat and biscuits. “Doughnuts’ll be another minute,” he told Royman.

  “Anyways, I gotta work,” Gus said as the first paying lunch customer strolled in.

  When Lydie and Emaline finished their stew, they settled into the living room to do some beading. Emaline was finishing up the bracelet she was making for her mother’s birthday next month. Lydie decided to try her hand at a choker.

  After a while, Mrs. Durham came in from the garden and walked over to the telephone. “It’s 1:30,” she said. She picked up the receiver, then put it down, hesitated, then picked it up again. Finally she spoke to the operator. “Good afternoon, Bess. Would you put me through to my sister-in-law? Thank you.”

  “Clarisse?” Mrs. Durham said after a moment. “Yes, Lydie’s right here. She can stay as long as she likes. Listen, Daisy didn’t happen to walk over there, did she?…No, everything’s fine. Maybe she wandered back over to the Pools’ house…Yes, I do trust that family, Clarisse… Yes, I know them well enough—Eva Pool is my friend…No, nothing else. I’m positive, Clarisse.”

  Next, Mrs. Durham tried phoning the Pools, but no one answered. Then she called her cousin Mickey and the Pikes down the street, whose new litter of barn kittens drew the neighborhood children, but they hadn’t seen her. She called the Pools once more, again with no luck.

  “Emaline,” Mrs. Durham called.

  “Yeah?”

  “Daisy must still be in the woods. Go fetch her, will you, before that stew spoils? Both of you.”

  “Can we finish our beading first?”

  “No,” she said more sternly than she meant to.

  “Okay. Come on, Lydie.”

  Mrs. Durham handed Emaline a biscuit in a paper bag. “Here,” she said. “Give this to her right off. She’ll be half-starved by now. And keep at it till you find her, you hear? I’ll whistle for you if she beats you home.”

  After Emaline and Lydie had hiked the forest path for a little while, chatting and calling for Daisy every now and then, Lydie put a fresh piece of gum in her mouth and said carefully, “Your mother seems pretty upset.”

  “She’s always upset,” Emaline said. “Upset and worried. Like I said, we haven’t pulled ourselves together like you and your ma have. She’s just overreacting.
Honestly, how far could Daisy have gone? She’s only four year old! She’s probably poking around for frogs or stones, the way she always does.”

  “Daisy?” Lydie shouted.

  Another half-hour passed.

  “Little girl, little girl, where have you been? Gathering roses to give to the Queen,” said Emaline. “Little girl, little girl, what gave she you? She gave me a diamond as big as my shoe. Daisy?”

  “C’mon, Daisy, we’ve got a biscuit for you,” Lydie called. Her voice was getting scratchy. “What time is it, anyway? It gets dark so early this time of year.”

  “It’s…God! It’s going on four. I had no idea. She’s been out here since—when did Ma say she sent her out?”

  “I don’t know. Hey, do you see any deer traps?”

  “Oh, no,” Emaline moaned. “Boys and girls come out to play, the moon does shine as bright as day. Come with a hoop, and come with a call, come with a good will or not at all… Daisy!”

  The girls walked on until they were dragging. “Are your feet hurting as much as mine?” Lydie asked.

  “They’re burning,” Emaline said. “I’d love to dip them in the river about now…the river! Ma never lets her near the water alone, it’s so cold, and the undertows and the drop-offs, what if she accidentally…?”

  “No one jumps into the river by accident, Em, not even a little kid. Calm down. You either jump or you don’t, and she knows better…hey, listen.”

  “What?”

  “Shhh. Listen. Over there, I think, in the brambles. Footsteps.”

  “Daisy? Daisy?” Emaline called. Twigs and leaves crackled underfoot, but no one answered. “Daisy?”

  A raccoon waddled out into the open. It rubbed one eye and swished its plump tail, blinked, and scooted back into the brush.

  “If I’d just gone straight home like I promised,” Emaline said. “If only I’d been on time. If only…”

  “Look, maybe Daisy’s already home,” Lydie said. “Maybe your ma whistled for us but we were too far away to hear. Maybe that’s why we can’t find her.”